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The Grypton by Targus - Review

Check out my newest toy. It’s called a Grypton and is made by Targus. It’s a cheaper (and less well-made) version of the Gorillapod, a “put your camera anywhere” style tripod. I picked up the knock-off Grypton at Wal-Mart over the weekend. It retails for about $10 whereas the Gorillapod of the same size is about $22. It’s rated to hold small cameras up to 9 oz. It does pretty well with my Kodak V570, but I wouldn’t really want to wrap it around tree branches on a windy day or anything.

Supposedly, it doesn’t perform near as well as the Gorillapod, but I’ve yet to try the real deal. I hear Gorillapod is filing a suit against Targus though. I also hear (or read, rather) the Grypton is too wussy to hold up a flash unit that takes 4 AA batteries, so go for the real thing if you are hanging multiple camera flashes off bridges or something, please.

I would definitely go Gorillapod if getting a larger size tripod of this type for a digital SLR or small video camera. I’ve had the Grypton fall off things a few times already and can only imagine what would happen with the larger version attached to a 3 pound camera.

The Grypton goes skittering across my car dash on turns, as the grip rubber on it doesn’t really do much in the way of gripping. Seeing as I was using two decks of playing cards and sticky tack to mount my camera in my car, I can’t complain too much though. I think I got my $10 worth.